


keep chasing echoes of my mind

by quietroom



Category: Bastille (Band)
Genre: Brainwashing, M/M, WWCOMMS, it's not really a dystopia but it could be?, rebels/wwcomms verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-26 01:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9856352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietroom/pseuds/quietroom
Summary: “I’ll be okay, you know,” Dan mumbles, slowly, rubbing nervous circles against Kyle’s wrist with his thumb. “There’ll be other people coming along, we have everything planned out ahead, and if they ever start being suspicious of us we’ll be right out of there before they can even touch us.” Kyle nods, quietly. Dan tightens the grip he has on his hand a little. “It’s just a few months! I’ll be reporting back every once in awhile, too, and I’ll be fully back before you even know it.”“It’s just…” Dan’s head perks up as Kyle finally turns around to face him. “I’d like it a lot better if you didn’t have to go at all.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> you don't understand how fucking excited i am to finally have finished this. this whole story's been sitting in google docs since last year and now i can finally put it out there and just NEVER LOOK AT IT AGAIN. HOLY SHIT.
> 
> anyway, this is a rebels/wwcomms verse fic, which is a concept that was developed over a series of asks sent to me on tumblr by anonymous users, so, shoutout to all those folk. this fic wouldn't have been possible without ya. even though i did deviate a lot from the original prompts sent. 
> 
> by the way, while writing this fic i was envisioning the boys on their early-mid 20s and not really as old as they currently are, thought i'd mention that
> 
> anyway, usual warnings (english isn't my first language, an attempt was truly made here even though it wasn't exactly a very good one, etc) apply, as always, because i feel like it's protocol for me to include those in the notes of all my fics now.
> 
> title from dew on the vine by bear's den, which, if you squint, maybe has something to do with this story...? i don't know. it's a pretty nice song though, so, yeah.

“Another one.”

Kyle tilts his head towards the sky and, following Dan’s hand, finds a blinking dot moving through the stars. He squints at it.

“That’s the sixth one so far,” he mumbles. “It’s not even been five minutes since the last one took off… can that be considered ‘strange activity’?”

Dan snickers, and even though it’s dark, Kyle can see him shaking his head. “That’s just how flights work, dude.” He says, voice low. “Even if it _was_ strange, reporting it would get us in more trouble than it’s worth, don’t you think?”

“Dick isn’t _that_ much of a hardass… he’d probably let us off with a warning if we gave him important information.”

“He was very kind to let us off with a warning the last three times he found out we were here,” Dan runs a hand through his hair, distractedly, attempting to tame the mess it currently was. “I feel like if he did again, no matter how important our information was, he’d _actually_ personally skin us alive _._ ”

“Did he really say he was going to do that?” Kyle raises an eyebrow.

Dan nods. “Last time, remember? _If you two ever_ dare _to even stick a single toe out there again without permission, I will find out and personally skin you alive,_ ” Kyle laughs at his attempt at mimicking their superior’s stern tone, and Dan’s quick to shush him. “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not be skinned alive tonight.”

Kyle’s laughing still, and he’s opening his mouth to say ‘ _oh, stop it–’_ but before so, Dan rather quietly adds: “Not the night right before I leave, you know,” and Kyle’s smile slips right off his face.

They both fall silent. Kyle distracts himself from this impending conversation by trying to find the plane they had just spotted in the sky, and following it with his eyes until it got too far from his sight. As soon as that happens, he turns back to the airport in the distance and spots another one taking off.

“There’s another one…”

“Kyle,” Dan ignores his remark. “We should talk about it–”

“Talk about what?” The faked ingenuity in his voice couldn’t fool anyone. He can feel Dan’s glare on the back of his head. “It’s fine, Dan, honestly. I’m fine with it, you–”

“Since when are you fine with it?” Before Kyle can spit out another obvious lie, Dan continues. “Wasn’t it you that practically stopped speaking to me for a week after I told you…?”

“I’ve come to terms with it now!” He snaps, looking at Dan’s dimly lit silhouette out of the corner of his eye. “I’m telling you, I’m fine. I just– I just want to…”

Kyle feels a cold hand be placed on top of his own, and yet he doesn’t look. The plane he had sighted just a few moments earlier seemed to have already vanished. He sighs.

“I’ll be okay, you know,” Dan mumbles, slowly, rubbing nervous circles against Kyle’s wrist with his thumb. “There’ll be other people coming along, we have everything planned out ahead, and if they ever start being suspicious of us we’ll be right out of there before they can even touch us.” Kyle nods, quietly. Dan tightens the grip he has on his hand a little. “It’s just a few months! I’ll be reporting back every once in awhile, too, and I’ll be fully back before you even know it.”

“It’s just…” Dan’s head perks up as Kyle finally turns around to face him. “I’d like it a lot better if you didn’t have to go at all.” 

A sad smile paints itself on Dan’s face. 

“I have to, though.” 

“I _know_ you do, you idiot. I just,” he lowers his voice to a little above a whisper, suddenly feeling very vulnerable, for a second understanding why Dick didn’t want them going up there by themselves. “I just– I just wish you didn’t.”  

They’ve inched a bit closer, and when Kyle looks up he finds Dan’s bright ( _beautiful_ ) blue eyes staring right back at him, moonlight reflecting off them in a way that makes Kyle think they’re _twinkling_. A brutally honest confession rises up in Kyle’s chest, but by the time it reaches his mouth, he’s swapped it out with something less hard-hitting.

“I’ll miss you.”

Dan chuckles weakly, and raises his other hand to brush aside a few strings of hair that had fallen in front of Kyle’s eyes. Kyle tries not to flinch. “Well, I’m still here for a couple more hours…”

“Yeah.” Kyle has to force himself to look away. “Yeah.”

He squeezes his hand a little, and a heartbeat later, feels Dan repeat the gesture.

* * *

“I hear Dan’s involved in that infiltration operation thing they came up with...?”

Kyle glances over at his companion, who grins smugly as he sees that he’s managed to finally get his attention. Will’s been trying to spark a conversation with him since they walked into the room, but all Kyle offered in response were variations of hums and grunts.

He blinks at him for a moment before nodding, slowly. “Um, yeah. He, uh, left a few days back.”

Will nods. “Woody thinks it’s ridiculous,” he says, leisurely. “ _Interning with the enemy_.”

“It’s… yeah,” Kyle glances back at his computer, set to the view of a few vigilance cameras set up around the city. “I mean… When you say it like that…”

“Why didn’t you go too? Thought you both were like, inseparable.”

“It’s – they offered _Dan_ the job,” the cameras on the screen begin to slowly turn. “They thought he would be one of the best fit for it. Said he had _‘all the right traits’_ and _–_ Where the _fuck_ is Charlie?”

He’s staring at the screen again, and Will peeks a look. “Over there.” he taps a person in the view of ‘CAM023’, wearing a black hoodie with the hood thrown up, casually leaning against a wall. Kyle sighs.

“Tell him to hurry up, there’s fourteen cameras and we don’t have all day.”

“Right on.” Will types something on his phone, and soon enough the hooded man in the camera view’s looking at his own, and then leaving his spot, moving off screen. “So you didn’t have ‘ _the right traits’_ to go with him?”

“What? Oh, uh, yeah, I guess,” Kyle leans his head against his hand, watching the cameras. “They were… very selective of the people that’d go. It’s a pretty important mission, or something…”

On the screen, CAM023’s view flickers for a moment before going completely black. “Great. Tell him to hurry to 041, don’t think there’s anyone suspicious around…”

“I don’t really get how Dan was _‘perfect’_ for that,” Will carries on with their other conversation as if Kyle hadn’t even said anything else. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s alright, but… he wasn’t ever fit for doing rescues or anything, was he?”

“That wasn’t what they were going for.”

“What was it, then?”

“It was– they, uh, wanted someone _likable_ ,” Kyle mumbles. His eyes are on the cameras, but not focusing on anything in particular. “Someone that would, like, be able to convince everyone there that he was on their side, so they’d give him more useful information, you know?” There’s silence for a moment, before Will hums, understanding. “That, and, well. Probably someone _their_ people don’t immediately recognise from… uh, previous encounters.”

“Oh, I see why I wasn’t considered, now.” Kyle doesn’t know how to reply to that, but it doesn’t seem to matter, as Will’s phone vibrates and he swiftly changes the topic back to their current job: “Charlie says he has no idea where 041 is.”

“It’s– the place we sent him to like a month ago,” Will types as Kyle speaks, jolting down his words in a text probably prefaced by ‘ _Kyle says…’_ “The one near the house with those dog statues? It’s just down from where 023 was.”

“You ever wonder why they don’t change their cameras so they’re not this easy to take down?” Will mumbles, staring at his phone and waiting for a response. “Or why they haven’t put their people on guard near them yet?”

“They’re not really as smart as they seem.”

“Hmm,” Charlie crosses camera 041’s view for a moment, before it flickers, and then fades to black. “Yeah.”

* * *

It was WWCOMMS standard to have all their _“employees"_ sport perfectly clean white jumpsuits at practically all times. Kyle, like many others enlisted with the rebels, has some awful memories associated with people that wore those, so it’s hard not to flinch or _react_ when seeing them walking around their own headquarters.

Even though he knows exactly what their motives and plans are, having them around makes Kyle a bit uneasy. The fact that he doesn’t really know most of the people partaking in this “operation” made his fight or flight instincts even harder to conceal every time he saw them around.

Their interns didn’t have constant schedules, so there was never telling when they’d have the opportunity to pass by and give reports on their new findings; so nobody could possibly let Kyle know when exactly Dan would come by, leaving him no real time to prepare.

So, seeing his best friend again shouldn’t feel like being kicked in the stomach, but yet it _did_.

“I don’t have much time,” Dan stammers, pulling away from the hug he had started as soon as Kyle opened the door, clearly in a bit of a rush. “They’ll notice I’ve left my post if I stay here too long, but I–” he lowers his voice, slowing down. “I wanted to see you.”

Kyle hesitates. His hair isn’t messy anymore, all the locks neatly sticking together and stylishly slicked back, and together with the damned jumpsuit he looks _way too much_ like one of _them_. “I– are you even allowed to...?” He asks, instead of the thing he’s actually thinking about.

“I’m supposed to give my report and then run back before anyone sees that I’m gone,” Dan shakes his head. “But it’s fine! That doesn’t matter, listen, I couldn’t leave without at least saying hi.”

His smile hasn’t changed, though. Somehow, that’s comforting.

“How have you been?” Dan asks, beaming at him, which makes something flutter in Kyle’s stomach.

“I-I should be asking you that,” Kyle shoots back. “You’re the one with the ‘ _highly dangerous, extremely important job’_ – how’s that like?”

“It’s stressful,” Dan says, glancing around the room, looking like he’s searching for something, but staying still in place. “But it’s going well, I think. Nobody’s suspicious of us yet… We think they trust us. It’s fucked up, working there, though.”

“Are you okay?”

Dan grins at him again. “Don’t worry about me,” he says. “How are things around here, then?”

Kyle shrugs. “Same shit.”

“Really? Nothing interesting happened while I was gone?”

“No… I just,” he hesitates. “I miss you,” Dan looks at him. “A lot.” He adds, quietly, though regrets it the moment those words leave his mouth.

“I do, too,” he sighs. “Look, we think we’re getting close to the information we _want_ , so not much longer until it’s over. I’ll be back soon,” a ghost of a smile brushes over Dan’s lips. “The moment I get back, we’re climbing up out there and catching up, yeah?”

Kyle nods. They’ve moved significantly closer, and for a moment, he considers just doing _something_. He can spot both the freckles on Dan’s cheeks and the bags forming under his eyes from this distance; and he’s raising his hand up to touch his face, but before he can even come close, Dan draws away.

“Should get going,” he says, completely oblivious to Kyle’s gestures, and stepping towards the door he had just walked in from. “I’m sorry we don’t have more time–”

“I-It’s fine,” Kyle stutters. “I… I mean, you _will_ be back soon, yeah?”

“Yeah, definitely.” Dan smiles. “See you in a bit.”

He’s gone before Kyle can even say anything else.

* * *

Woody spins around in what they had since started calling the _comfortable chair_ , distracted. Kyle keeps his eyes on the screen, filled with blacked out cameras, spinning the ring on his middle finger with his thumb. “This is fucking _pointless_.”

“What?” Woody asks, loudly.

“It’s fucking pointless, all this– there’s nothing else to do, we’ve gotten all the cameras!” Kyle complains, voice reaching a high pitched level. Woody looks at him, sitting still, probably still dizzy from spinning. “What are we doing, bloody– waiting for them to come and repair them? Christ!”

“Hey, at least you’re not Charlie,” Woody says, slowly. “Worse than being stuck inside– he’s out there.” He shakes his phone in his hand, as if making a point.

“How can we know that, the cameras are all off!” Kyle gestures to the screen again, incredulous. “He could literally be taking a nap at his dorm right now for all we bloody know– has he even texted?”

“Five minutes ago, _‘let me know if anything comes up’_.”

“Ugh, does that not sound a lot like something someone who’s napping on the job would say?” Woody shrugs, indifferently, and Kyle drops his head on his arms. “Send him– ask him something.”

“‘Something _’_ entails…?”

“I don’t fucking know, ask him what he’s up to, if it’s cold out there, if he’s seen any dogs, anything! If he takes too long to reply then he’s definitely _, definitely–_ ” Kyle cuts himself off with a sigh, burying his face on his hands.

“ _Kyle… wants to know… if you’ve seen… any… dogs... out there._ ” Woody mumbles, as he types down the message, then puts the phone down as soon as he’s finished. “Was there ever really any reason _why_ you lot had to deactivate their cameras?”

“Well, in the beginning they’d use it to track our lot down, you know, when we went out there to fuck with their stuff. They’d deploy their people after us and all, it was well fun.” Kyle sighs. “We’d fuck with them so they couldn’t see us. Then they’d reactivate them and we’d fuck with them again. But now we’re more careful around the cameras and they don’t seem to even bother with them anymore…”

He makes another weak gesture to the inactive cameras on the screen. “Why do we fuck with them now, then, if they don’t even use them anymore?”

“God, fucking– something about our _morals_ and not allowing them to watch the _general population_ or whatever, I guess,” he grumbles, recalling the shit excuse Dick had given him just the other day. “I’m pretty sure they just threw this at us because they want to keep us busy. Have you seen the tasks they’re shoving at people these days?”

“It has been really slow around here lately,” Woody agrees. “Not like I really miss going out and being chased by jumpsuit-wearing maniacs, but…”

“We got into this to be chased by jumpsuit-wearing maniacs, what are you–?” Kyle doesn’t finish his sentence, only sets a questioning look upon Woody, who chuckles. “But we’ll get better things to do, soon…” Woody’s phone chimes, and Kyle looks over. “Charlie? Fucking told you–”

“No,” Woody says, suddenly. The smile he had on his face was quickly replaced by a frown. “ _Shit_.”

Woody quickly gets up from his seat, and Kyle, by reflex, starts doing the same. “What’s–?”

“It’s a call for help at one of the entrances…” he hesitates, glancing from the phone he has in one hand to Kyle, who’s now up as well.

“What– what’s happening?” Kyle stammers, confused. “I thought there weren’t even assignments being given out?”

“It’s… something to do with the double agents we were sending in.” Kyle’s heart skips a beat, thoughts immediately jumping to _Dan_. “Apparently there’s a group of them right–”

“What the fuck are we standing here for?!” He says, urgently. “They need help, let’s go!”

* * *

Dan was not included in the group of people they had to help inside.

There were half a dozen or so people to be carried in, all wearing white jumpsuits, but none anywhere near the pristine conditions Kyle was used to seeing. Dirt and blood wrapped around the logos, rips at the sleeves and collars, it was easy to assume that something rather ugly happened.

Kyle would later find out that apparently WWCOMMS started becoming suspicious of their new batch of interns, but quietly enough for them not to be alerted by it. One of the men who had partaken in the mission wheezed something about them not even showing any sort of suspicion at all until the very last second, which made leaving a _bit of a struggle_ , probably evidenced by the state of the ones who managed to escape.

The ones who didn’t, though…

“Are you still at it?” Will sighs, leaning against the doorframe.

Kyle grunts in response, keyboard constantly clacking under his fingertips. He hadn’t left his laptop since they broke the news to him. Lines of code and complicated commands and actions were laid in front of him in white lettering, a constant being simply the same capitalised words– ‘ _ACCESS DENIED’._

Will glares at Charlie, who seems momentarily distracted by something invisible at the end of the hall until Woody nudges him in the ribs with his elbow, getting him to flinch. “Ow, what–” he can’t even finish his complaint, being interrupted by sincerely scary looks from his companions. “Uh… yeah, Kyle, about what I said…”

While he doesn’t look, Kyle stops typing. There’s an odd moment of silence, as Charlie didn’t seem to expect him to give him his attention quite this quickly, before he returns to his point.

“Um, yeah, about that. You really… you shouldn’t have taken me seriously,” he hesitates a little, still feeling Will glaring holes at the back of his head. “I was just trying to console you when I, uh, when I said that thing. I have no idea if it’s true or not, I’m new here, after all– the chances of him being dead are just as big as any other…”

“No, you were right,” Kyle says, sparing a look. “They _avoid_ killing people if they can, and Dan has too much information about the rebel movement for them to just throw away like that.” He turns back to his computer, stopping briefly, once more, before beginning to type again. “Not this soon, anyway…”

Charlie gives Will and Woody a defeated look, but they don’t seem as eager to give up. “Kyle, listen, it’s–”

“A _‘lost cause’_ , I know, whatever,” he mumbles, looking between his keyboard and the screen. “I’m not asking you lot to help me.”

“Mate, we’re fucking _worried_ about you,” Woody breathes out, and Kyle stops once more. “It’s been two weeks, you’ve barely even left the room– you need to take better care of yourself.”

After a small pause, Kyle shakes his head, turning back to his incessant typing. “I’m really close to getting it, now.”

“You’ve been saying that for–” Woody exhales, frustrated, glancing over at Charlie and Will for help, but they stand still in place (Charlie makes a rather comical expression as he shrugs), and he rolls his eyes at them. “Listen, Kyle. If nobody ever managed to break into their database, then I hardly doubt you will, specially alone.”

He doesn’t even stop this time. “Thanks for believing in me.” Kyle replies, coolly.

“Oh, come on, I didn’t say–”

Will interrupts Woody. “What he’s trying to say, I _think_ , is that maybe this is getting a bit _too_ obsessive, and we’re worried about your wellbeing.” Woody huffs, but nods in agreement. “We know how you and Dan were close, but what you’re doing now isn’t helping either of you.”

“How–” for the first time, Kyle establishes direct eye contact with one of them. “How is it not helping _either of us_? When I break in there, I can figure out where he is, and–” he interrupts himself, seeing the look on their faces. “What?”

Nobody responds for a moment, and, seeing as nobody seemed willing to talk, Charlie sighs. “Well we– this is going to sound really bad, sorry,– but we… don’t really think you’re going to do it.”

Will and Woody frown at him, but they don’t deny it. “Yeah, I think can gather that much, thanks.” Kyle grumbles, scowling at them. “You _can_ leave whenever you want.”

“We just want you to be okay, mate.”

“Right.”

The incessant clacking of keys returns, and Kyle returns his focus to his laptop, letting them know that this conversation– failed intervention, more like– was over. Will lingers at the door for a moment as they decide to leave, but walks away without opening his mouth.

* * *

Kyle thinks the words “ACCESS DENIED” must’ve been burned into his corneas by now. He blinks at the screen, trying to clear his now rather blurry vision, and while rubbing his eyes, he swears he can see the words imprinted on the inside of his eyelids.

After _weeks_ of work, he had managed to quietly break into their actual access terminal, and managed to find his way to the login screen, as well as having stumbled upon a seemingly functional username. All he had left to do was attempt to guess its password, which was– much like this entire plan– easier said than done. He put together a program that was attempting about every single possible combination of words and letters and symbols, and Kyle figures that he’d get in eventually if he just kept it running and fixing the eventual hiccups in the code.

Kyle watches as “ACCESS DENIED” keeps blinking in the screen, wishing, for whatever reason, that he had a cup of coffee, even though he had never been too fond of the taste.

The thought of just shutting down his laptop and going to bed and having a proper night of sleep crosses his mind, but Kyle immediately counters it with _the longer I take to figure this out, the more likely Dan is to be dead._  He yawns, leaning a little bit closer to the screen, so the light from it wouldn’t let him fall asleep.

Dan hadn’t been the only one that was taken, but he was the only one who didn’t have a chance to fight back. _“He was standing right next to two actual agents when they gave off the signal,”_ one of the people that escaped told Kyle. _“He probably couldn’t even react properly. When I looked he was already being dragged off, unconscious… I’m sorry.”_

He had, several times, tried to picture it. Faceless agents in white jumpsuits grabbing ahold of him and managing a straight blow to the head, enough to knock him out instantly, before he could even process what was happening around him. Several times, Kyle thought _maybe they had killed him_ , but then why wouldn’t they have just left his body alone, use the spare agents to pursue the other infiltrated rebels?

The idea sparked this tiniest bit of hope. Kyle tries not to think about what they could’ve possibly be doing with Dan if they hadn’t yet killed him, and his eyes lazily focus on the lines of attempts, blinking on the screen.

_ACCESS DENIED._

_AUTHENTICATION REQUIRED:_

Dan had promised him that they’d meet again _soon_. He promised that they’d all be safe, that they’d be out of there before anyone suspected anything… He wonders if those were just empty words.

“Your food’s getting cold.”

Kyle jumps out of his seat at the sudden noise, but quickly settles down as soon as he realises it’s Will, passing by to check up on him, _again_. He throws a glance at the tray he had set next to him on his bed, and quickly returns it to the screen, mumbling something under his breath.

“What was that?” Will asks, stepping inside.

“I’m not hungry,” Kyle states, loud this time, not deviating his eyes from the constantly running code. “You can leave, now.”

“Oh, come _on,_ dude– when was the last time you ate?” Will crosses his arms, staring at the back of his head. Kyle doesn’t answer. “Look, I’m sure you can eat and do whatever the fuck you’re doing right now…”

“I’m _not_ hungry.” Kyle repeats, turning his head towards him. “Thanks, but I’m good.”

Will huffs. “You’re literally going to die if you keep doing this, you’re aware, yeah?” Kyle shrugs, but that only makes Will more annoyed. “Look, you’re not gonna save _anyone_ if you don’t take the slightest care of yourself.”

“Can you lot _just stop_ –” Kyle snaps, suddenly, feeling something like anger and annoyance bubble up in his stomach. “Just _stop_ fucking telling me that! I know! _Uh, you might die if you keep doing this_ – whatever! Look, as long as I manage to just _know_ that there’s a _chance_ Dan’s alive–”

He glances back at his laptop as he’s motioning towards it, and cuts himself off, noticing how the program wasn’t apparently running anymore. With a sigh of frustration – “Oh _great…" –_ Kyle leans his head closer to the screen to check what went wrong, but finds a completely different prompt than he’s expecting.

> _AUTHENTICATION ACCEPTED  
>  _ WELCOME TO WILD WORLD COMMUNICATIONS, S. WILKINSON  
>  _PLEASE ENTER COMMAND: |_

“What?” Will asks, as Kyle continues to gape at the new text, brain struggling to process it. “Kyle–”

Kyle quickly shushes him, and sets his shaky hands to type _something_ out.

> help

A list of possible commands fills the screen, and Kyle scrolls his eyes through all of them as Will steps nearby, trying to sneak a look. His heart starting to race as he stumbles upon the command to check the register for people– his _only hope_ of finding out…

“I…” Will mutters. “You… you did it?”

> dir reg

> _PLEASE ENTER COMMAND: |_

> help search

> _**SEARCH** : displays results for used tag words_
> 
> _Syntax: search [Tag word]_

 

“Holy shit.” Will says, quietly, reading with him. Kyle stares at the new prompt, shaky fingers hovering over the keys, otherwise frozen. “Holy _shit_ , Kyle.”

“Shush, I’m–” he interrupts himself, swallowing his words after his voice breaks.

They’re quiet as the words remain ever so still on the screen, a single slash blinking, awaiting commands to be typed. “What are you doing?” Will’s voice breaks the silence, and Kyle’s startled for a moment. “His name, search for him.”

“What if– what if he isn’t…?”

“Then you’ve just thrown away three whole weeks of your life for nothing. Just _type it_.”

Kyle swallows dry.

> _PLEASE ENTER COMMAND:_

> search daniel

> _SEARCH: daniel  
>  _ _SHOWING 122 OUT OF 122 RESULTS_

The screen is once again filled, but this time with all the information there is on their registries that involves the name _‘Daniel’._ Kyle has no idea why he’s so suddenly so anxious. He’s been hoping for this for so long…

“There.” rings Will’s voice again, louder than Kyle expects, getting him to jump. His finger’s next to one of the results, and as soon as he reads it, Kyle’s heart skips a beat.

_54\. SMITH, DANIEL CAMPBELL | S20455_

> open s20455

> _COMMAND UNKNOWN: “open”_

> access s20455

> _DISPLAYING **S20455**_
> 
> NAME: SMITH, DANIEL CAMPBELL  
>  SERIAL NUMBER: 20455  
>  STATUS: ACTIVE  
>  SECTOR: 04

The words “STATUS: ACTIVE” seem to shine brighter than the others, and Kyle realises he’s holding his breath. The account he’s using doesn’t seem to have the security clearance necessary for him to see other information on him– but that doesn’t matter. He’s _alive_ and they know where he is _..._

“Where are you–?” Will starts, as Kyle jumps up and rushes to disconnect his laptop from its plug.

“Telling our superiors. Y-You coming or not?”

* * *

Kyle had, somehow, never been to this hallway. As far as he was aware, their headquarters weren’t _exactly_ as big as WWCOMMS’, but apparently they were big enough for there to be hallways and rooms he had never explored before.

Charlie, who had woken him up and was now guiding him through this new area, doesn’t seem exactly very happy to be doing so, which concerns Kyle and doesn’t very much help his anxiety. He had initially been glad he wasn’t taking him to their so deemed “medical wing”, but now the mystery factor of having no clue where they _were_ even going made him worry a _lot_ more.

“Did they just get back?” Kyle asks, attempting to be conversational, but coming off as more nervous than anything.

“No, they, uh, got here a few hours back… sorry,” he adds, quickly, as Kyle stares at him. “Everything was a mess, they thought it’d be better if they just woke you up later, or something– I dunno, they got me involved like, _just_ now…”

“Is– is everyone–?”

Charlie shakes his head. “Ask Woody, I _just_ got involved.”

Silence falls again as Charlie pauses to check their surroundings, apparently lost. He curses under his breath and complains about something before turning back around. “Why did they have to make this place so _confusing…_ ”

“Where… where are we going, exactly?”

“Woody,” Charlie says, now more carefully looking around to see where they were going. “He asked me to get you.”

“And… where _are_ we right now?”

“Uh… good question,” Charlie stops for a moment to check if they were going the right way this time before continuing. “I heard someone say something about training here or, uh, the bosses staying here, I don’t know– _there he is!_ ”

Woody’s standing near a door at the end of the hall, and he jumps at Charlie’s exclamation, which bounces through the walls for a few moments before fading in the distance. “No shouting!” He hisses in greeting, glancing wearily at the door next to him, as if expecting it to burst open, and Charlie nods, ears red.

“What’s going on?” Kyle asks, skittish, skipping the greetings and the _‘thank god you’re alright!’_ s out of urgency. He realises something before Woody can even finish sighing. “Where’s… Where’s Will?”

“Medical. Think he might’ve broken his arm, maybe his nose too, we don’t know. He’s okay other than that, though, just getting fixed up.” Woody waves him off, weakly, still shooting glances at the door.

“Where– did you lot–?”

“Yeah. Yeah, mission was pretty much a success…”

Kyle’s heart skips a beat. “So he’s here? He’s okay?”

Woody looks at him warily. “He _is_ here.” He says, slowly. “But… well, uh, something happened.”

“What?” Woody seems to be struggling to put the right words together, and Kyle immediately jumps to the worst possible conclusion. “No… please tell me he isn’t, like–”

He’s already picturing Dan’s corpse lying in the room behind Woody and piecing this whole situation together when Woody shakes his head, quickly. “No, no, he’s alive. _Very_ much alive, mind you, he just woke up–” Kyle tries taking a look inside the door through the tiny window it has, but Woody promptly blocks him. “Hold on, mate.”

“He’s in there?” Woody doesn’t respond. “Let me see him.”

“You need to understand– they did _something_ to him. We don’t know what, we’ve never seen this from them before, but–”

“Why isn’t he in medical with Will, then?” Kyle breathes out, eyes darting between Woody and the door he’s blocking.

“It’s– it’s not exactly something the people there can help at the moment…” Woody mumbles. “This is for the best, currently...”

“What do you mean?” Kyle shoots, now growing impatient. Woody hesitates, opens his mouth, but then closes it without saying anything. Kyle huffs. “Whatever.”

He pushes Woody aside and pulls the door open, entering before either him or Charlie could reach out and stop him. They don’t bother him once the door clicks shut.

He doesn't have to look too far to find him– the room is tiny, and Dan’s standing near one of the walls. Kyle’s heart does a hopeful leap. He’s still wearing their jumpsuit, though now it’s significantly dirtied up, and when he turns to look at him, Kyle notices that he’s wearing a pair of sunglasses.

The image makes Kyle raise an eyebrow, a rather confused chuckle escaping his mouth. He’s about to say something probably stupid when Dan moves, slowly raising his hand up to one of his ears, and tapping at the inner corners with his fingers, mumbling something Kyle can’t quite hear.

“What?” He asks, and flinches at how loud his voice sounds. Dan doesn’t seem fazed, continuing tapping at his ear and mumbling _something_ , so Kyle steps closer. “Dan?”

He doesn’t stop. Kyle can’t see through his sunglasses, but he can tell he’s staring right at him. A chill runs up his spine, as he finally realises something is actually _very wrong_. “What are you–”

Suddenly, he can hear him. “Rebel sighted, location unknown,” His voice– the voice Kyle _so missed_ hearing…– is low, tone completely devoid of any emotion, making Kyle freeze in place. Dan stops, suddenly, lowering his hand. “Communication device…”

“What? Dan, you–”

“ _WWCOMMS_ emergency protocol states… restrain and await further orders…”

Before he can even properly react to that, Kyle’s gasping for air, back shooting with pain of impact against the wall. He can barely tell what happens in the following moments– Woody and Charlie shoot in through the door, Woody managing to drag Dan away from him with difficulty, and Charlie helping him up to his feet and hushing him out of the room.

There’s shouting, but Kyle can’t understand it properly. He looks over at Dan as he’s exiting, and finds that at some point in all this commotion the sunglasses had been knocked out of his face, and he’s staring at him with wide and vacant milk-white eyes.

* * *

“I can’t believe Woody just let you go in there.”

Kyle doesn’t say anything. His eyes are fixed on the ceiling, thoughts stirring around the events that happened in that previous room and the fact that the stretchers they had down in medical weren’t as comfortable as they could be.

Despite the lack of response, Will carries on. “He fucking saw Dan punch me square in the face back then– he was even the one who knocked him out so we could bring him back here! He of all people should’ve known there was a chance he’d try to kill you–”

“He didn’t try to kill me,” Kyle says, voice weak. “He was trying to _restrain_ me.”

“Yeah, yeah, grabbing you by the throat and squeezing truly is a good _restraining_ technique. Hardly ineffective at killing, it’s actually a very known method of immobilising your foes!”

Once again, Kyle doesn’t respond, but lets off a few coughs a moment later. This discourages Will significantly, making him swallow the rest of the rant he had planned for this situation, getting the room to fall silent.

“What happened when… when you got there?”

Kyle’s voice is still rather wheezy and quiet, but it cuts through the tense air of the room like a knife.

Will takes a moment to sigh before answering. “Well… We knew almost immediately that something was wrong because he was up and about and wearing the jumpsuit,” Will mumbles, dropping the angry tone from just a minute ago entirely. “We tried talking to him and getting him to come back with us, but he wasn’t really budging. So after a bit we realised he had called security on us with that bloody… earpiece thing they all have, he punched me, Woody knocked him out and we ran off, carrying him with us.”

There’s a pause. “What, what about the others that were captured?”

“We only managed to find Dan, and we already had the alarm ringing on us, so we couldn’t exactly find the time to run around trying to find and rescue the rest of them,” Will huffs. “I don’t doubt they’re all exactly like Dan is right now, though. So maybe that was for the best…”

“Did they… did they brainwash him?” Kyle asks, meekly, raising an eyebrow at the mere idea of it. Will shrugs. “They can’t _brainwash_ people. I mean… they’re fucked up, sure, but they _can’t_ _possibly_ …”

“This is WWCOMMS we’re talking about, isn’t it?” Will says, slowly. “Doesn’t mind control seem exactly like the sort of thing they’d do?” Kyle doesn’t respond. “Besides… I can’t come up with any other explanation for it.”

The memory of Dan’s purely white eyes following him out of the room pops back up in Kyle’s mind, sending shivers down his spine. He opens his mouth to mention it, but can’t find his voice to speak about it.

“Surely he can’t be all gone.”

Kyle turns to look at Will. “You think?” His voice cracks and fades at the second word, but Will understands, and nods in response.

“We’ll get him back,” he says, slowly, keeping his stare at the wall in front of him rather than Kyle. “I don’t know how, but we will.”

* * *

Dan was locked inside that tiny room due to rather obvious reasons. Kyle heard something about them assigning people to guard his door, but by the time he managed to get out of medical care, excuses and pleas already made up, he found nobody to really be there. 

The reason became rather obvious after a few minutes of looking in through the window on the door: he _never moved_. Dan quietly sat on the bed, hands on his lap, eyes focused on the floor– like a statue. Showing absolutely no wish to escape or to even struggle with the fact that he was being held prisoner.  

Knocking on the door felt like tapping on the glass of a dead fish’s aquarium. 

Despite the fact that the sight disturbed Kyle to no end, he developed a habit of sticking by his cell door, staring through the window and just simply watching until someone spotted him and promptly shooed him away. He was never allowed in, and always warned to stay away every time he was found there, but that hardly did anything to stop him from going.

What rather angered him was the fact that nobody seemed to be concerned with curing him in the slightest. Dick consistently waved Kyle off whenever he came up to him to ask how they were planning on “fixing” him, saying something vague about having to wait for more information to get started with it and telling him to just _wait and do what he’s told_ instead of worrying about it.

It’s been weeks, and Dan’s still stuck in his cell of a room. Still as a statue...

“Kyle? What’s–”

Kyle yelps at the touch of the hand on his shoulder, jumping a feet away before realising that it was _just_ _Charlie._ Kyle stiffens when he laughs at him.

“What was that about?” He asks, watching as Kyle attempts to recompose himself, return to a more ‘casually cool’ looking stance.

“Don’t– don’t, don’t do that,” Kyle stutters, shattering whatever was left of his reputation as he speaks, and getting Charlie to snort in response. “Please.”

“Okay, I’ll try to make my presence clearer next time,” Charlie says, smiling. “What are you doing, though?”

Kyle pauses. He spares looks between Charlie and the door to Dan’s cell for a moment, trying to come up with a possibly good enough excuse, but before he can do so, he notices something. With a hand, he slowly points at the tray Charlie is holding. “What… are _you_ doing with that?”

“Avoiding the question, but, fine,” Charlie mumbles, and Kyle flushes a little. “I was assigned to bring Dan meals.”

“Wh– What? Why?”

“Because… eating?” He raises an eyebrow at the question.

Kyle shakes his head. “No, idiot– why–” He cuts himself off mid sentence as he notices something, and quickly shifts his question. “Why aren’t you wearing the _uniform_?”

There’s the slightest amount of irony stressing this last word, but Charlie stiffens a little regardless. “I, uh,” he hesitates, sparing looks between the tray he’s holding, the door to Dan’s cell, and Kyle. “Okay, look, I’m not supposed to be doing this, but,” he lowers his voice, and Kyle curves himself down a little to hear better. “He _wasn’t eating_ . I had been bringing him food for _days_ and he never even _touched it_. They said that he’d eat it eventually, but I doubted it, so I just… started going in, sort of to make sure he fed himself?”

Kyle takes a moment to process this, and as soon as he does, his heart does a nervous leap. “You, you can go _in there_?”

“Yeah, well, don’t tell, though, I’m not exactly supposed to–”

“W-Why doesn’t he try to, to kill _you_ , then?” He stutters, eyes shooting between Charlie and the door next to him.

“Well, he doesn’t exactly _do_ much, even when I’m in there with him,” Charlie shrugs. “Depending on the day he actually looks at me when I walk in the room, even, I don’t need to _flick_ him to get him to notice I’m there…” Noticing Kyle’s disbelief at this, Charlie quickly continues. “He seems way less wary when I’m not wearing the _‘uniform’_. Think it’s maybe something to do with whatever WWCOMMS did to him. Guess they just trained him be ticked off by people in black hoodies or something? Anyway, I need to–”

“Let me in with you.” Kyle sputters, as soon as he raises his hand to motion towards the door. Charlie blinks in surprise at this reaction. “ _Please._ I need to– I need to _see him_.”

“I’m– I’m not sure that’s–” Kyle doesn’t even need to speak. The bare look he gives Charlie, the sleepless, worried stare he keeps on him is enough to get him to sigh. “Ugh, fine. Just… maybe don’t get too close to him? And, uh, take your hoodie off.”

* * *

“Eating time again,” Kyle mutters, as he pulls the door close behind him, swearing that Dan looked at him out of the corner of his eye as he entered that time. Kyle sighs. “Got you some actual decent food this time. Lucky you, yeah?”

No response. Not like Kyle was expecting any, but some part of him remained ever-so-slightly optimistic. Charlie had rather pessimistically informed him that he never spoke regardless of provocation (“He was pretending I wasn’t even there, so I poked him a bunch,” Charlie explained, upon noticing Kyle’s worried look), so it’s not like there was anything to be specifically optimistic about, but his pure presence there was better than outright nothing.

“Here, look,” he pokes the food with a plastic fork, before nudging it towards him. Dan looks at it for a moment before turning his eyes away once more. “Oh come on… it’s safe to eat, okay?” Kyle tastes a bit of the food to reassure him. “See? Won’t kill you.”

He pushes it towards his lap, and Dan finally properly looks at it. His hands twitch for a moment before slowly reaching for the fork, and Kyle lets out a breath of relief. Once or twice he had come back to the room the next day only to find he hadn’t even touched the plate he had brought, and even though they seemed to be past that by this point, he was still rather afraid of the possibility of that turn out.

“This was your favourite meal from over here,” Kyle remarks, distractedly, as he turns to find Dan digging into the meal more excitedly than he had ever seen him since he entered this ‘state’. Something about how he still seemed to enjoy this meal sparks a bit of actual hope. “Always said it could use a bit more spice, though… you said that a lot. Pretty much every time we sat down to eat it. It was like– like, _automatic_. This kneejerk reaction every time you put a forkful of it in your mouth, to just go ‘some hot sauce would make this so much better’ or whatever.”

Nothing. No surprises there.

“Uh… one day we actually… sneaked into the kitchen to try and, well, ‘borrow’ some hot sauce. We planned it like a bloody heist... wandered in like proper spies– or, well, uh, bandits, maybe?” Kyle sighs. He’s taken the spot next to Dan on the bed, having already determined that he wasn’t exactly very harmful, especially while eating. “Anyway. They caught us. Big surprise. I dunno what’s up with the kitchen people and their condiments, though, because they got so _fucking mad_ … it was just a shitty hot sauce bottle!” He chuckles, mostly to fill the silence. “What’s funny, though, is that as soon as they caught _me_ , you could’ve run off and left without being caught and lectured, but you actually decided to take the blame as well. Always thought that was funny.”

“... why?”

Kyle jumps, startled, which is sort of pathetic assuming that this reaction was brought out by a word that was simply whispered _._ He spends a moment wondering if he just imagined it, but when he turns to face Dan, he’s stopped mid-forkful, and is staring directly at him with those glossy white eyes of his.

It’s rather unsettling, actually– and Kyle feels as if he’s trying to bore holes into his head just with that stare. It takes him a bit to regain enough composure to speak once more, even though his voice falters.

“Why… why what?”

He doesn’t reply.

“Why– why you decided to take the blame? Or why I find it funny?” He just silently stares, unmoving, creeping Kyle the fuck out. “I-I, uh, I dunno. Why you didn’t run off. Always guessed it was because you were too nice of a person to let me get punished by myself. And, uh, I dunno why I find it funny.”

Dan keeps his glance for a few moments more, as if waiting for a follow up, but as he doesn’t get it, he turns back to his food. Kyle finds that his heart’s still racing.

“Do you… do you remember any of that?” Kyle says, hesitantly, to, once more, nothing. Dan continues shovelling food inside his mouth like no interruption had even happened in the first place. “D-do you even remember me?”

The words hurt his throat as they leave his mouth. He’s never asked this before, but… well, Dan hasn’t even _interacted_ with Kyle in any way since he attacked him. Such a weirdly heavy question felt silly to ask to a literal statue.

But regardless of the confirmed fact that he _did_ listen and that he _did_ still have the ability to talk back, Dan still didn’t answer. He’s done eating, now, and so is his excuse to stick around. Dan doesn’t show any reaction as Kyle pulls the empty plate out of his lap, and he sighs as he turns back to leave, considering maybe telling someone that there was a slight bit of an improvement…

“Kyle.”

He freezes with his hand on the door handle. Dan’s back to his staring, awaiting a reaction of some sort.

Kyle takes a deep breath.

* * *

Sometimes, if Kyle were to squint, things would seem rather normal. Back to the way they were _before_ , at least. Seeing Dan’s bed occupied once more, having a companion to walk around with him that didn’t ask where they were going, feeling the quiet and pleasant presence of someone else in the room doing nothing with him…

But the illusion was usually shattered whenever he looked at Dan’s face.

It wasn’t easy, none of it was. Between convincing _anybody_ that Dan was trustworthy enough to be granted the liberty of being able to live outside of a cell, and dealing with the consequences of whatever the fuck WWCOMMS had done to him, Kyle could feel the grey hairs sprouting right out of his head.

He hadn’t ever expected it to be remotely simple. He had maybe hoped a little bit, but he had earned all the pessimistic traits possible from his years of living around Dan.

“You alright?”

Kyle hadn’t heard a single hum from Dan for the last 15 minutes. They had just been sitting in their quarters, but he learned that this could be a sign of something being off.

“Yes.” Dan’s voice is still a bit stiff, a bit quiet, but Kyle assumes it’ll eventually get better the more he tries speaking.

“Cool, just checking.”

He can feel Dan’s eyes lingering on him for a moment or two before he turns his attention back to his book, and silence settles back in the room.

Routine now is just keeping an eye on him. It’s not sleeping through his nightmares and being there when he has panic attacks, it’s reminding him that he can speak without being spoken to and helping him unlearn all the mannerisms and rules he had picked up from ‘agent training’.

Kyle feels like he hasn’t properly rested since he first started trying to break into WWCOMMS’ database.

“Knock knock?” Kyle turns his chair around almost instantly, facing the door and finding Woody. “Hey, you two. Everything good?” He looks at Dan as he asks this, and Dan tilts his head in a curt nod in response. “That’s great. Kyle, though– can I talk to you outside for a min’?”

“I, uh… Sure?” Rather hesitantly, Kyle gets up from his seat to follow Woody’s lead. He glances at Dan as he leaves, and thinks he sees the tiniest amount of curiosity in his usual blank expression before he walks out. “What’s this?”

“Nothing, really. Just…” Woody takes a breath, and Kyle raises an eyebrow. “Did someone pass by earlier, ask you to go pay a visit to the offices…?” Kyle’s eyebrow falls, slowly turning his expression into a frown. “Okay. Guessed so. Uh, well… It’s fine. They just wanted to know when Dan’s going to be able to give them more info?”

The grunt that escapes Kyle’s mouth is almost entirely automatic. “Tell them it doesn’t fucking _work_ like that.”

“Okay, uh… maybe–”

“Look,” Kyle hisses a little, having lowered his voice significantly. “He doesn’t like talking about WWCOMMS. I’ve tried bringing it up, every time he has bad reactions, and I can’t keep fucking doing that to him,” Woody makes a face, and Kyle continues on. “I already gave them all the info I’ve managed to get out of him!”

“Yeah, but like… they want more?” The reaction is nearly instantaneous, but before Kyle can go off spewing insults, Woody continues. “Dick said something about working on this really huge plan based on the things the informants managed to tell us before, uh, _that_ happened; but they really need Dan’s input to piece everything together–”

“Tell him to go fuck himself.”

Woody stares. “I am not going to do that.”

“Well, that’s my message back to him and the rest of them, and it will be regardless of the bloody lackey they send over,” Kyle sputters. “Do they ever reckon he doesn’t want to relive it? Like, just for a second consider his situation? He was fucking _tortured_ , Woody!”

“I get that, I’m just trying to figure out a way to let Dick know that, that doesn’t involve me having to tell him to go fuck himself,” Woody says, and, slowly, Kyle calms down. “Look, mate, I know it’s been really fucking hard lately, but the instructions they gave me were literally ‘talk to him until he gives a concise answer’, so.”

“‘Go fuck yourself’ is a pretty concise answer.” Kyle mumbles.

“It really is, but I bet that isn’t going to make anybody there really happy.” Woody sighs, looking around. “I could go back with that, but they’ll probably send five more people over to bother you tomorrow.”

“They all know it’s fucking pointless, but… well, I did this to myself, didn’t I.”

“They’d never let him out of there if you didn’t make some sort of promising deal,” Woody reassures him, and Kyle hums. “Look, I’ll… make something up myself, try to get them off your arse for a little bit.”

“That’d be awesome. Thanks, Woody.”

“It’s alright. Hey, we’re here to help.”

As Kyle walks back in the room, he catches a glimpse of Dan scrambling to get back to reading his book, a very poor attempt at pretending that he wasn’t listening. He walks back to his chair without comment, settling back down and staring at the screensaver on his laptop’s screen for a minute before something occurs to him.

Turning to face Dan, Kyle clears his throat, catching his attention. “Let’s go somewhere, yeah?”

* * *

“Over here.”

It really isn’t hard to sneak Dan out of the headquarters, as he compliantly follows every instruction Kyle gives him without argument, albeit with a touch of curiosity and confusion. Despite it being night, he squints the moment his head pokes out of the exit hatch. Kyle offers him a hand, but he helps himself up.

Dan doesn’t say anything, but his raised eyebrow asks the question for him. “We’re getting there, come on.”

The walk towards their usual spot used to be filled with tiny chatter, hissed shushes and sometimes laughter, but this time Kyle doesn’t even attempt conversation. Nobody ever drove through these roads, but Kyle still makes them walk through shadows until they reach their destination.

“There’s an airport out there somewhere,” Kyle finally says, kicking some pebbles away from a spot and pointing away at the horizon, which Dan looks at with curiosity. Kyle sits down, and Dan follows the gesture eventually. “We found this spot recently, actually, we used to sit all the way over on the other side and we couldn’t really see… do you remember this place?” He asks, interrupting himself. “We used to come up here all the time before…”

He trails off, but he stills looks up at Dan, rather expectantly, waiting for an answer of some sort.

Dan only stares back, blankly. His eyes uncomfortably twinkle against the moonlight with none of their usual beauty– because, for some reason, they just had to fuck up his eyes, didn’t they?– and Kyle forces himself to look away, sighing.

“Sometimes it gets really cramped in the base… we used to climb up here to get a bit of fresh air,” a plane takes off in the distance, and Dan quietly takes note of it, following its path with his gaze. Kyle distracts himself by plucking blades of grass out of the ground. “Last time I saw you… before all that happened, you, uh, promised me we’d come up here the moment you were back… do you really not remember?”

This time, Dan slowly shakes his head in response. Kyle sighs.

“How… how _can_ you not, though?” Kyle inquires, slightly louder this time, grabbing Dan’s attention once more. “God, this was– this _is_ our place! We spent so much time up here– how do you not remember _any of it_? The times we got caught after? All the lectures we got from coming up here without permission?” Dan blinks at him a few times, silently. Whatever frustrated comment he was going to spill out next gets caught up in Kyle’s throat, and he swallows it. “I… Shit. I’m sorry.” Is what he mumbles, instead, looking back at the ground. “Isn’t like this is your fault...”

“It’s okay.” Dan says, quietly.

“Not really. Don’t let me do that again.”

He nods, hastily.

Kyle feels frustration start to bubble up in his stomach once more, something about how he can’t just be so accepting of everything and anything people tell him to do, that he’s not just some mindless servant like _they_ tried making him out to be– but all that is pushed back when he looks at him. Dan’s staring fixedly at the planes flying by in the distance with somewhat of a fascination, like he hasn’t quite seen something like this before.

“I was expecting this to work out like it does in movies,” Kyle says, turning to look at the sky as well. “You’d step out here and suddenly everything would rush back and... I dunno. You’d be back?”

A beat of a few seconds passes without either of them making any sound. Dan aims his eyes to the ground; Kyle takes a breath, and with a slight bit of hesitance, decides to speak again.

“Last time we were here, it was, like, the night before you left for the… the _thing_ ,” the words feel bitter on his tongue, but he keeps speaking, trying to keep his voice slightly hushed but failing. “You, you very specifically told me everything was going to be fine,” he lets off a nervous chuckle. “And I didn’t believe you, not really– but, I mean, I couldn’t just fucking tell you not to go, you so bloody obviously _wanted_ to do it, it’s just–” he takes a sharp breath in, interrupting himself. “I… I don’t know.”

Kyle should be used to his silence by now but it still affects him. He doesn’t look at Dan.

“I wonder what would’ve happened if I had somehow managed to… to stop you from going,” he mutters. “Or what would’ve happened if I was there. I could’ve volunteered to go along– maybe I could’ve helped you? I– Fuck, I could’ve done something.” … “I could’ve– If I wasn’t such an _idiot_ , you– this would’ve never fucking _happened_ , I-I–”

He chokes on whatever he’s about to say as he feels a cold hand be placed on top of his own.

Dan looks absolutely ghostly in the moonlight, pale skin almost translucent, and his damn _eyes_ do absolutely nothing to help the chill Kyle feels crawling up his spine.

“It’s not your fault either, you know.”

His voice is quiet as it had always been since _it_ , but he manages to articulate this sentence in such a way that feels absolutely sincere, feels exactly like something he’d _actually say_. It makes something in Kyle just click into place.

He gently grabs Dan’s hand.

This time, when the words rise up in his chest, he lets them go, unfiltered.

“I love you.”

A heartbeat later, he feels him tighten the grip.


End file.
